A Cognitive Study Of American University Presidents’ Commencement Addresses From The Perspective Of Metaphtonymy

Educational discourses refer to discourses used in the education process including lecture notes,textbooks,classroom dialogues,academic treatises.Educational discourses record the process by which humans construct experience.The commencement address of American university president is a kind of educational discourse conveying educational concepts.According to previous studies at home and abroad,in terms of research contents,researchers on educational discourses mainly focus on specific classroom models,teacher discourses,textbooks and handouts.Educational speeches are rarely involved.Therefore,the study selects 50 commencement addresses from American university presidents in 2020 as research objects.From the perspective of research theory,commencement addresses researches mainly employ the systemic function theories and cognitive theories.Both of them have their own shortcomings in analyzing texts.This research attempts to combine system function theories and cognitive theories to analyze principal’s commencement addresses.Based on critical metaphor analysis model proposed by Chateris-Black,the research combines conceptual metaphor theory,conceptual metonymy theory,conceptual metaphtonymy theory and critical discourse analysis to establish a new analytical model.The research identifies conceptual metaphor types,conceptual metonymy types and conceptual metaphtonymy types in addresses of American university presidents and reveals educational concepts behind the cognitive mechanism.Then,this research attempts to explore the possible social factors that influence the formation of educational concepts including social situation,religious views and cultural factors.It can be concluded that there are mainly 10 types of metaphors involved in addresses.That is,entity metaphors,container metaphors,personification metaphors,journey metaphors,family metaphors,building metaphors,war metaphors,up and down metaphors,front and back metaphors,deep and shallow metaphors.What’s more,the metonymy relationship in addresses mainly involves two types,namely metonymy based on perception ICM and metonymy based on reduction ICM.Finally,this research subdivides Goossens’metaphtonymy types.There are 7 subtypes,namely metaphor from metonymy based on perception ICM,metonymy within entity metaphor,metonymy within personification metaphor,metonymy within journey metaphor,metonymy within family metaphor,metonymy within war metaphor and metonymy within fire metaphor.These three cognitive mechanisms mainly reveal two themes.One theme is about students’ relationship with the university.Students grow in the university and make contributions to the university after graduation.The relationship between students and universities is a lifelong relationship.The president conveys an educational philosophy of lifelong students.The other theme is related to the COVID-19.The presidents expose the severe situation of the epidemic.The presidents hope that students assume their social responsibility to realize their own values accordingly.This research analyzes commencement addresses by using cognitive and critical analysis method.On the one hand,the study shows discourse characteristics of addresses and enriches research content of educational discourses.On the other hand,it can provide a new perspective for the study of educational discourse.